Funko plans to open a giant toy store in Hollywood

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The company that makes the popular toys with Bobble heads plans to open a nearly 40,000-square-foot store in Los Angeles later this year.

"So many people are looking for an experience when they shop – not just to buy things," Funko (FNKO) CEO Brian Mariotti told CNN Business in an exclusive interview. "It's the pop culture of the retail business."
Funko is known for his vinyl figures based on popular characters from film, television and comics. It also reproduces real-life athletes. The company has licenses with most major studios, including Disney (DIS) for his characters from Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars, Warner Bros. for the DC Comics and Harry Potter franchises, as well as for Pokémon. (Warner Bros., like CNN, belongs to AT & T's (T) WarnerMedia.)

The Los Angeles store will be located on Hollywood Boulevard, not far from the famous TCL Chinese Theater. It will be close to a Shake Shack and SoulCycle, that is to say fashionable. Mariotti said the company was aimed at both tourists and local residents.

In a store at Funko's headquarters in Everett, Washington.

Funko already operates a smaller outlet at its company headquarters in Everett, Washington. Mariotti said that when the company opened the store, he thought it would be a hit with pop culture enthusiasts and Funko employees. The store eventually exceeded those expectations.

Mariotti said that moms with young children are big fans. Many customers are also frequent visitors. This proved to Funko that it might be a good idea to set up shops in cities that would attract a mix of local fans and amateurs wishing to go to the store.

The new location in Hollywood will allow customers to pose with life-size Funko figurines and sit in a miniature version of the Batmobile, he said.

He added that the company was still working with the property developer and local authorities in Los Angeles, so the store would not be ready for some time. But he hopes to open it in time for Halloween. Parts of the store are being built in Washington and shipped to California.

Funko stormed the toy industry

If the store is successful, Mariotti said that more Funko sites could open in other tourist guys, such as London, Tokyo and Las Vegas.

But he quickly pointed out that Funko was not trying to compete with its retail partners. Funko, like other toy manufacturers, sells a lot of merchandise on Amazon (AMZN) and Walmart (WMT) and Target (TGT). The company also distributes at specialty retailers such as GameStop (GME) and Hot Topic.

Instead, Mariotti said the goal was to create even more followers for the brand, boosting the sales of these large retailers.

Funko will release its results for the fourth quarter on Thursday and should talk more about its retail projects at that time. Analysts expect sales to rise nearly 20% from a year ago and earnings per share more than double.

The stock is already up more than 50% this year.

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